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The Black Lives Matter activist who was charged in Monday’s targeted shooting of Louisville, Kentucky, mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg was previously the subject of a missing person investigation that called into question his mental health.
Quintez Brown, 21, was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment after he entered Greenberg’s campaign headquarters in Butchertown and fired multiple shots using a 9mm Glock handgun, police said. Nobody was hurt, but Greenberg’s shirt was grazed by a bullet, police said.
LOUISVILLE ACTIVIST ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER OF MAYORAL CANDIDATE PUSHED SOCIALISM, GUN CONTROL
Greenberg is a White, Jewish Democrat, and police have not provided details about the possible motive for the shooting but said they are looking at all angles.
Brown previously worked for the Louisville Courier Journal as an intern and an editorial columnist, according to the newspaper. He shared a short campaign video on Twitter in December announcing that he was running to represent District 5 for Louisville’s Metro Council in 2022.
Brown made headlines last summer after he went missing for about two weeks. His family was critical of the Louisville Metro Police Department during the investigation and said police were “ill-equipped” in helping to locate Brown. His parents told local media at the time that their son could possibly be going through a mental health crisis and pleaded with the public to help find him. Brown was later found safe in New York.
Brown’s family later said in a July 1 statement issued by Black Lives Matter Louisville that they were privately addressing his “physical, mental and spiritual health.”
Before the missing person episode, Brown was a prominent activist during the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police unrest following the May 2020 death of George Floyd.
In July 2020, as a student at the University of Louisville, Brown was honored by the Obama Foundation’s MBK Rising initiative and was one of only a handful of students in the country to attend the inaugural national gathering of the Obama Foundation’s My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
“I better my community for the boys that look just like me by changing the narrative around violence, masculinity, and professionalism,” Brown said in a statement still featured on the foundation’s website.
Brown told local media around the same time that he demonstrated in Louisville “every day” during the Floyd unrest, and he cheered local efforts to remove police officers from schools.
Brown told Louisville Magazine in March 2021, just months before his disappearance, that defunding the police means exactly that: “We want to take money away from the police.”
“We want to see less officers. We want to see less money in their budget,” he told the magazine. “You can’t reform that institution. Defunding the police is our first step toward dismantling everything that was rooted in slavery. Because they’re the original slave catchers. When Black people try to liberate themselves and become free, you had the police to stop them and put them back in their place. So defunding the police to me means kind of like funding our revolution by defunding our oppression.”
During the same interview, Brown said that “even the most progressive Democratic leaders” are complicit in systemic racism, adding, “we’re really at war” with the establishment.
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Last month, Brown wrote a Medium post touting communism and revolution.
“The revolutionary consciousness of the masses must understand that the struggle against the negative forces of genocide and fascism will not end at the ballot box of the ruling class,” he wrote. “Attempting to get within one of the two major parties has caused our leaders to become co-opted with their interests shunted to the background. They have become expendable.”
Brown pleaded not guilty at an arraignment Tuesday and his bond was set at $100,000. During the arraignment, his lawyer said Brown would undergo a psychiatric evaluation, The Associated Press reported.
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
